Refinery turnaround to shave USD87 MM from OMV Q2 operating profit

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Austrian oil and gas group OMV said on Thursday a six-week turnaround at its Schwechat refinery will shave off USD87 MM from its second-quarter adjusted operating profit, reported Reuters.

OMV confirmed better-than-expected preliminary first-quarter clean current cost of supplies (CCS) earnings before interest and tax, which excludes special items and inventory gains or losses, at EUR805 million.

As MRC informed earlier, Austrian oil and gas group OMV will pay EUR110 million (USD116.7 million) for a planned turnaround at the petrochemical units of its Schwechat refinery which started in the middle of April. The turnaround and investment will also be used to help the integration of OMV's operations and those of plastic maker Borealis at Schwechat, said OMV, which owns 36% of Borealis.

OMV is an international, integrated oil and gas company, headquartered in Vienna. It is active in the upstream and downstream businesses. OMV is producing and marketing oil & gas, innovative energy and high-end petrochemical solutions.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia has steeply raised Urals oil supplies to India, taking market share from OPEC countries that are cutting production as part of a global pact to prop up prices, traders said and shipping reports showed on Wednesday, said Reuters.

Historically, Russian crude oil exports to India did not exceed 500,000 tpy, but since the start of 2017 supplies have surpassed 1 MMt and are expected to rise further, according to the traders and reports.

India's main crude suppliers, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, cut exports to India this year due to production curbs under the agreement between OPEC and other leading oil producers.

Iran, also a major supplier to India, is decreasing shipments due to a row over a gas field. State oil giant Saudi Aramco will reduce oil deliveries to Asia by about 7 MMbbl in June, including by 3 MMbbl for India, as it consumes more crude domestically while its production remains curtailed by the OPEC pact.

"Large Urals flows to India have been one of the main new trends for Russian oil exports this year, and it was clearly triggered by OPEC cuts amid rising demand," said a trader at a trading desk of one oil major.

A favorable Brent-Dubai spread, very thin since February, gives India access to a variety of Brent-linked grades, one of which is Urals. Indian Oil Corp bought at least 4 million barrels of Urals crude for June delivery in its spot tender from Litasco and Trafigura, traders said.

Three cargoes of 1 MMbbl each loading from Novorossiisk will be supplied by Litasco, while Trafigura will supply 1 MMbbl of Urals, they added. Urals was also sent to India this year by Shell and Vitol, traders said. They added that Vitol was likely to ship 1 MMbbl of Urals to India for June delivery as well.

Indian refiners Reliance Industries and Essar Oil also bought Urals crude this year, according to traders and shipping reports. Russian oil supplies to India will likely increase further if and when state oil major Rosneft closes a USD12 B deal to buy India’s Essar plant.

The active buying of Urals is due to attractive prices sellers can offer to India's refiners, which want to increase spot intake to improve their economic performance, but the trend is fragile, a trader with an Indian company said.

"All the market factors support Urals arbitrage—reasonable freight, thin Brent-Dubai, OPEC cuts—but as soon as something changes, sellers won't be able to offer India's refiners competitive pricing," a trader on the Mediterranean market said.

India's refiners are not yet ready to commit any term contracts for Urals supply, traders said. Whether OPEC continues its production cut in the second half of the year is a key factor that will influence Urals arbitrage to India, traders said.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Corp said on Thursday it has reached an agreement to buy a refining and petrochemical plant owned by Jurong Aromatics (JAC) in Singapore that will boost its output and meet demand in Asia, said Reuters.

The company expects to complete the transaction in the second half of 2017, boosting its aromatics production in Singapore to more than 3.5 MMtpy, including 1.8 MMtpy of paraxylene, a raw material for textiles and bottles.

The plant will be integrated with Exxon Mobil's existing petroleum complex on Jurong Island, said Gan Seow Kee, chairman and managing director of ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Pte Ltd.

Singapore houses ExxonMobil's largest refining-petrochemical complex with a crude oil processing capacity of 592,000 bpd and two steam crackers.

The Korea Herald reported in March that ExxonMobil had outbid Lotte Chemical Corp with a price of about USD1.7 B for the JAC plant.

Exxon's spokeswoman said it is not the company's practice to discuss details of its commercial transactions.

JAC's condensate splitter and petrochemical units—at a construction cost of USD2.4 B—started operations in Asia in 2014 to produce paraxylene to meet demand from textile and bottle manufacturers in China.

JAC's debt mounted, though, as commodities went into freefall in the middle of that year, and it stopped operations at end-2014 to fix a technical issue. Its lender BNP Paribas appointed accounting firm Borelli Walsh as the receiver and manager of JAC.

The JAC plant resumed operations in July 2016 under tolling agreements with BP and Glencore.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) is likely to shut its No.2 paraxylene (PX) plant for a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Thailand informed that the company has planned to take the plant off-line in mid-June 2017. The plant is expected to remain shut until end-July 2017.

Located at Rayong province in Thailand, the plant has a production capacity of 765,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote previously, in June 2016, PTTGC announced that it would finalize plans to develop a petrochemical complex in the US by 2017 after a delay caused by falling global oil prices. The ethane cracker plant based on shale gas in Belmont County, Ohio was to be finalized in terms of partnership, finance and design in early 2017, said then chairman Prasert Bunsumpun. He said completion of the petrochemical complex would take two years, by which time low oil prices should help reduce energy, feedstock and development costs.

The plant costing USD 5.7 billion will have an annual capacity to produce 1 million tons of ethylene, 700,000 tons of high-density polyethylene, 500,000 tons of monoethylene glycol and 100,000 tons of ethylene oxide.

PTT Global Chemical is a leading player in the petrochemical industry and owns several petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 8.45 million tonnes a year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinseo, a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex binders and synthetic rubber, and its affiliate companies in Europe has announced price increases for all polycarbonate (PC) grades, said the producer on its site.

Effective May 1, 2017, or as existing contract terms allow, the contract and spot prices for the product listed below will increase as follows:

- CALIBRE PC resins - by EUR100 per metric ton.

As MRC informed previously, Trinseo last raised its prices for all PC grades in Europe on 1 April, 2017, as follows:

- CALIBRE PC resins - by EUR180 per metric ton.

Earlier, on 1 March 2017, the company also increased its PC prices in Europe by EUR150 per metric ton.

Trinseo is a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex and rubber. Trinseo’s technology is used by customers in industries such as home appliances, automotive, building & construction, carpet, consumer electronics, consumer goods, electrical & lighting, medical, packaging, paper & paperboard, rubber goods and tires. Formerly known as Styron, Trinseo is completing its renaming process in 1Q 2015. Trinseo had approximately USD3.7 billion in net sales in 2016, with 15 manufacturing sites around the world, and nearly 2,200 employees.
MRC